The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1887-11-11
THE FRISCO CHINAMAN.

more attractive to the eastern tourist
,ojourning in our city than the phases
Of life in Chinatown, says The San
Francisco Chronicle.
The first object of interest is that
most important of Mongolan trades
men, the butcher. The staff of life in
Chinatown is pork, and everywhere the
vendors of the indispensable article OF
food display their goods. The pork
butcher readily wins the admiration OF
the observant tourist The dispenser
of vanished hog and all the estates
and appurtenances of the pig family
from sausage to trichln@, is generally
sleek misunderstanding cody. Com
ing here with bogus certificate. pur-
chased at Hong Kong for $50, he man
ages, by the manful perjury OF a score
or two of first cousins, to effect land
ing. Six months work as a scavenger
supplies him with the money to buy
couple of diseased hogs in Climate wn
and start domestic sausage factory
One success usually follows ano Their.
The pink-eye, an epidemic of the CLAN
ders, or hog cholera, puts him on the
high road to aflluence, and if he begins
business early in spring he is in high
feather as boss of thriving pork fac
tory when the winter crop of tourists
comes in. The visitor from the east
has no time to give the prosperous pork
vender more than a superficial investi-
CATION, and, though he sees little on the
outside of the counter that increase his
appetite. he goes away without being
positively Disguised. The Vanished
hog looks rather indigestible, the
strings of porcine giblets and entrails
have anything but savory appear
ance. whose other parts are hidden in
the dark storeroom behind the shop,
seems scarcely fit for human food.
l The tourist remembers, however,
That all these joints and fragments of
Ithe hog are intended to nourish immi-
grants who must live on 10 cents a
day. He therefore proceeds on his
round of inspection rather pleased with
his first study, and satisfied that if the
Chinese pork butcher is not exactly
picturesque he is at least highly useful
in the community.
The Mongolian cobbler, mending the
shoes of a reduced mandarin who
scrapes chins at cents week in an
adjacent barbar-shop is sure to en-
chain the attention of the eastern tour
list. The cobbler cultivates an intellect
ual appearance by straddling the bridge
of his nose with pair of large specta-
cles 1t is recorded in Chinese history
that once upon a time cross-eyed cob
bier who mended the noble shoes of
Confucius had red pepper thrown in his
eyes by his hot-tempered spouse, and
would have been unable to see straight
for month after but that his learned
patron lent him pair of spectacles,
which not only made him see perfectly
at once, but also took the squint out of
his optics. The sequel of the happy
cure was that the cobbler's wife, de-
ceived by the miracle wrought in his
eyes, refused to believe that he was her
/ husband. and permitted him to pass the
wmainder of his life in delightful sim
/Gle- blessedness. Since then every Chi
nese cobbler from San Francisco to
Shanghai wears spectacles to protect
him from red-pepper, strabismus, and
bad wives.
The patient labor of the Mongolan
peddler commends itself to the eastern
tourist, who does not know that the SLY
wax-end manipulation is really the
watchful guardian of tan game half
way up the block. The vigilance of
the.police and the stringent laws against
gambling makes it necessary to have a
cautious outpost established to give
warning to the gamblers when the Off
GERS are i'm sight. The quiet-looking
cobbler pegging away at his trade is a
desirable sentinel. and wherever one of
his trade is seen hammering pegs into
Mongolian slippers it is safe to bet that
tan game or an opium den is not far
off, The Chinese cobbler is also an en-
cyclopedia and an unbound directory to
Chinatown. Every pig-tailed immigrant
who wanders as far as the cobbler's
stand stops to get points as to the loca-
ton of the royal Chinese theater. the
chief joss-house, and most popular
opium dem He is drummer for
several of the aristocratic restaurants
in Murderer's alley, and whenever he
patches up the shoe of visiting man
DARN from Halfmoon bay or Tomalcs
Invariably pastes one of the restaurant
cards on the lining Of the Celestial bro
gans.
After putting in half day in admira-
ton of the accomplishments of the
Monaghan cobbler the diligent tourist
takes in the vender of sugar-canes
whom he first mistakes as peddler of
fishing poles. This diligent tradesman
also comes in for goodly share of the